


Butterfly Goodbye

by Darkravenwrote



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 05:05:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkravenwrote/pseuds/Darkravenwrote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you want, Potter?" "I want to learn what it feels like to be normal. I want to be away from the pitying eyes of my friends and the awkward stares of my acquaintances. I want to feel alive before I die. I want to spend my last night living."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butterfly Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Scientific Note: not factually based. It is known that butterflies actually live for about a week, minimum, ranging to months and a year, maximum. But for my own purposes can we please pretend they have the lifespan of the mayfly – which really isn't very poetic.
> 
> Enjoy.
> 
> Reviews are welcome.

* * *

**Butterfly Goodbye**

It was gone midnight by several hours when the tentative knock sounded on the door to the Head Boy's private rooms. Draco Malfoy looked up from his half filled whiskey glass. He stood, swiping at the creases in his trousers as he did so, and strode towards the door on bare feet, swilling the velvet liquid in its crystal confinement as he went.

The dark bags under his eyes were evidence of the cruel previous weeks. Many years ago, his mother had warned him that things would only get harder with each passing year. It was just in these recent times though that the full weight of her words was beginning to sink in. He ran his free hand through his shaggy, golden locks, failing in his attempt to plaster the annoying front strands to the top of his head and away from his bloodshot eyes. His black slacks were rolled up at the ankle, concealing muddied hems and revealing ashen skin and shining, fine hairs. Two buttons, both of which were hanging on by their last threads, held his plain, white shirt, once expensive, together. He looked, for want of a better word, dishevelled.

Draco swigged from his drink a last time, swinging the glass onto his bedside table as he passed, calculating the momentum of the slide perfectly so as not to spill any of the precious, honeyed liquid. The knocking came again, more persistent this time. Draco grumbled to himself, rubbing at his stinging eye as he rested his hand on the silver door handle. He was expecting Pansy, searching for a comforting arm and a warm shoulder to cry on. He was expecting Blaise, knocking for casual sex as a method of distraction and a way to live his youth while it lasted its short life, neither of which he would find in Draco. He expected Professor Snape, appearing from the shadows to berate him for something or other, likely his latest hobby concerning his sleeping pattern, or lack thereof, in that knowledgeable but disconcerting way of his. What he was _not_ expecting, was to find a possibly more haggard and bedraggled than usual Potter standing at his door.

Draco's eyes widened. He gulped loudly. Then the awkward silence began. It was like when a declaration of undying love is made, but the boyfriend is waiting right around the corner or when you have a conversation lasting hours with someone and then say farewell with the wrong name. It was like when a boy stumbles and pulls down his crush's trousers and there's that uncomfortable pause while everyone registers what has happened and the horrified eye contact lingers. Potter coughed tensely. He began to shift doubtfully from foot to foot. Draco's face felt like frozen marble, refusing to shift, not even in order to glare.

Their stasis was broken by a shrieking giggle down the hall in the Slytherin common room. Draco shook himself and belatedly snarled at the glacial figure before him. "Get in." He grunted, ushering his rival past him, muttering to himself as he did so, "Salazar only knows what people will think if they saw you hanging around outside my door."

Draco scanned the corridor, praying that no one had seen the bespectacled git and then whirled around, slamming the door forcefully behind him. Potter was standing awkwardly in the middle of his room, his eyes, glasses sliding down his nose, flickering around; from the emerald sheeted bed; to the half-empty crystal glass on the table; across the room at the definitely closed door and back again. But never at Draco. He was, therefore, unaware of the vicious glare that was being shot at him.

"Was there something you wanted, Potter? I do have better things to do, you know." Draco snapped, snatching his glass from the table and knocking back another gulp of the alcoholic drink.

"Drowning yourself in drink." Potter stated, raising sceptical eyebrows and causing his glasses to slide down his nose an inch or so more. He leaned nonchalantly back against the nearest wall, careful to keep eye contact with his stony rival's stare, and began fighting with his cuff buttons to undo them and roll the dirty, white sleeves of his school shirt up. Draco paused, considering him. He turned his back and strode to where his glass lay abandoned.

"What. Do. You. Want?" His voice was a low, predatory hiss, each word a sharp, snapping bite into the chamber. His fingers lashed out and snaked around the crystal venomously. Tension sizzled in the air, becoming more and more of a physical entity. Draco remained facing away from Potter. His internal battle on this matter raged. On the one hand, he wanted to see those eyes that were always so open in the hope that maybe Potter would unknowingly give away the secret of his visit. On the other though, he definitely did not want Potter to glean something from his own face. He felt a bead of sweat dribble down his spine as Potter finally answered.

"I want to learn what it feels like to be normal. I want to be away from the pitying eyes of my friends and the awkward stares of my acquaintances. I want to feel alive before I die. I want to spend my last night living." Draco turned, his brow set in a frown as he watched Potter, whose nerve broke and his eyes lowered once more to the ground as if he were ashamed or embarrassed.

"You Gryffindors don't understand the concept of subtlety, do you?" Draco grumbled, spinning elegantly on the balls of his feet and crouching down to rummage in his cabinet.

"For once in your pitiful life, this one time, could you not just accept honesty without being a pompous git!" Draco found a smile lurking on his lips at that sudden passionate anger the Gryffindor was famous for. He imagined his eyes would be blazing a fiery lustre as well. He snagged an extra glass and the bottle of whiskey with his fingertips. He then stood and topped up the two glasses, knocking one into Potter's hand, by some miracle managing not to slop a single drop over onto his pristine carpet.

"You come here with your excuses expecting my sympathy or…what are you here for exactly?"

"I already told you. I want –"

"No, Potter, you've misunderstood, as usual. I don't want to hear you reciting bad poetry. I'm not in the habit of empathising with my enemies. Now, what is it you really want?"

The room crawled into silence again. Awkward silence. During their hissed conversation, Potter had slid down the wall, dropping his head down dejectedly and cradling his drink between his knees in long fingers, looking for all humanity to see as if the weight of the world were pressing down on his shoulders. From his hunched position sitting on the edge of his bed, Draco was suddenly struck by the reality of the situation. His youth, that is, the entirety of his life, had been governed by his father's oppressive rules and strict, firm grasp, trapping him like a bird in a cage. Now that he was so close to his goal, a new light had come to shine over his vision. He and Potter were not so very different, except, Draco imagined with regret, Potter's life was likely more like a pinned butterfly's. There was the excitement of the flight and the beauty more radiant than an angel's but it was short lived. Potter would live forever as a lifeless momentum restrained within a glass casing after his glorious day of flight had ended.

"Just talk to me, if nothing else. Keep me occupied." Potter mumbled through his shaggy trestles that were falling over his bowed face, hiding his features from view.

"Why would I do that when I could be, how did you so eloquently put it, 'drowning myself in drink?'"

"You'll do it because tomorrow morning," Potter began what Draco envisioned to be an entirely philosophical speech, "I am going to go out there and die for you." Draco wasn't so selfish or deluded as to think for even a second that Potter was speaking exclusively of him personally. He knew he was referring to the plural, the world that was depending so heavily on him, but the way he spoke still sent a tingle running down his spine. Just to be included in Potter's words was enough to make his feel special. It was now that Draco understood that this was another of Potter's powers, and an attribute to his commendable leadership skills.

"…So what did you want to talk about?" Draco spoke into his glass, temporarily yanking all thoughts of conscious rivalry from the forefront of his mind.

"Pour me another," came the murmured reply, "and we'll find out." Draco hadn't even realised his…companion's glass was empty.

* * *

Three hours later, Draco's secret supply of alcoholic beverages, muggle and magical, had been severely depleted. He and Harry – although he wasn't too sure when he started thinking of his as such – were lying on his floor at the foot of his bed, both giggling in an extremely effeminate and drunken manner at most things whether said, done, thought, humorous or sombre.

"S'not that _I_ hated you." Harry slurred, "S'more tha Ron-Won hated you."

"Yes, I assumed your ina…ina…inabililility to make your own decisions was something to do with your poor judgement."

"Oi! God, even totally sloshed you sound like an up…upperc…total prick."

"S'four O'clock." Draco mumbled waving his wand for the _tempus_ charm with slightly too much zeal and causing a chair to fling itself over on the other side of the room. Harry chuckled along beside him and fell back to the floor from his sitting position with an exaggerated 'whooshing' exhale. Suddenly the room went sombrely quiet.

"You reckon you can still do a sobering charm?" Seconds later Draco felt his cheeks loosing some of their intoxicated blood and his brain waking from its inebriated state. "Thanks."

"No problem."

Draco stood awkwardly in the silence that followed, picking up their inevitably empty glasses and dumping them heavily back on his bedside cabinet before flopping back, boneless, onto his bed, spreading his arms out at his sides and playing with the silken fabric at his fingertips. He closed his eyes and watched the flickers of green light that leapt before him. It was as the bedsprings beside him dipped under another body's weight that the rest of the night…morning began to blur in his memory. He remembered emotions crawling through his mind so sensually they made his jaw clench and his breath short. He remembered corporeal feelings of the flesh without the image of the separate movements in his mind's eye.

Draco wasn't sure what made him accept Potter when he opened his arms to him. It could have been that he was subconsciously aware that this would be the last time he saw him, his personal, socially stunted goodbye. It could have been the alcohol, despite Harry's sobering charm, which was his preferred choice of blame. Then again it could have been a momentary lapse in the concentration that kept his sex drive in check, he was only a hormone-enslaved teenager after all. There was also the unthinkable explanation; that somewhere, deep…deep, deep down below the granite ocean and spitting volcano, Draco actually had – dare he think it – feelings for him that, had they had time, could have spread like wings to form a blossoming relationship. As it was, it was a possibility that Draco did not want to admit past the reflexive responses of his mind.

When he looked back on it later, no matter what the reason for his actions, there were certain things he would remember. The ferocious snapping of articles of clothing as they were shredded by vicious, demanding claws followed by the heavenly feel of long needed skin sliding against slick skin. The lingering, delicate aroma of alcohol, cinnamon, mint, sweat and an indescribable scent that was their personal smells hazing together to create a new one.

He remembered delighting in the darker skin of his companion against his own ivory skin as their hands entwined together. He remembered the need to dominate, causing pushes that ensured he lay upon his partner. He remembered the raw animal desire to thrust, to reach completion, held back only by his will to elongate this encounter for as long as humanly possible because he knew, even through the haze of want, this would never happen again. He remembered the taste of salt on his tongue as he lapped at an arched neck and the touch of abstract lips peppered over his heated skin as a reward, combined with the surprisingly pleasurable bite of blunt nails scraping urgently across his bare back.

Simple things that he would have dismissed and ignored normally seemed to become a new sort of important to his hypersensitive senses. Like the way Harry flushed whenever he moved on top of him. Like the sweeping locks of hair swirling as he swished his head in different directions every time certain sensitive points across his torso or neck were touched. Like the way his fingers and toes curled every time Draco felt a smile crack through his mask to the surface. They were images imprinted into his mind that he knew he would never forget. Just like how he would never forget the fluttering of fingers trailing down his stomach, making the muscles there twitch impatiently in anticipation.

He remembered even less about the actual act than the build-up. What little of the memory he had was wiped away by the overpowering physical feelings that come with sex and override and rational thought. Images of frenzied movements against each other blurred in his mind with an animalistic insistence to reach a natural completion. The iron grip on his upper-arms hardened. The body beneath his arced impossibly high. And then an inconceivable tightness was crushing around him and legs were locked securely around his waist. And then he was flying past the moon and on towards Venus, spreading golden wings he never knew he could even dream to possess. He remembered the blinding white, numbing all his sense as his body shivered and spasmed. Then the explosion of colour, like a butterfly's wings, as his senses returned, feeding his blissful state with unneeded details as if their momentary lapse could be corrected via a belated overcompensation.

He remembered a few quick words half penetrating his postcoital ecstasy. Words of thanks and friendship and an eternal deserving rivalry that was never to be forgotten. Words of reassurance that, although his purpose for this midnight visit had been nothing but noble, if he had been able to rewrite the entire night, he would have done nothing different.

Draco remembered rolling to the side and promptly falling asleep with his arms wrapped around another warm body and a light, grateful and somehow compassionate kiss on his forehead. He also recalled waking alone the next morning to a cold bed, a piece of traitorously blank parchment and the screams outside already shattering the beauty of the morning sunrise. It seemed that once again, Harry had flitted out of his reach just as had thought he was nearly in his grasp.

* * *

Draco scrambled under the thick brambles and branches of a bush lying on the dirty ground like the Slytherin coward he was. Longbottom had sprinted past with a gaping hole in his side and his nerve had broken. True, he felt completely useless, half an hour into the bloodshed and he was already floundering for an escape. He continued to crawl through the undergrowth, pausing only to jump to his feet and run to a thick thicket of trees when Bellatrix Lestrange's body thumped down directly beside him, guts pouring from the deep wound in her stomach, with a victorious Mrs. Weasley standing over her.

Draco felt his entire body shiver as he bolted over a flowing river of crimson death. The sun was dawning but he felt as if the world was dying with every inch it climbed into the sky.

He came upon Harry, already absorbed in his fateful battle, in a clearing not far into the Forbidden Forest. And his first thoughts were exclamations of his appearance. He looked beautiful, wonderful, awe-inspiring and a thousand other things that Draco did not have the coherency even in thought to express. His ebony hair was positively dancing atop his head like black flames sent straight from the underworld to vanquish all in its desired path. His skin blazed like golden fire, illuminated by the sun piercing sharply through the trees behind him. Eyes that burned and simmered with a fierce determination and loyalty crackled with their own power as if they were a single, detached entity alone. He stood tall and proud before the greatest dark wizard of the time, not phased by his situation but accepting the inevitability of the situation with a maturity and courage worthy of only the truest Gryffindor. Draco couldn't have moved if he tried.

The suddenly Harry was thrown backwards, flipping haphazardly through the air away from his enemy, caught off guard by a malevolently shimmering blue light. And Draco could almost see them glowing, sprouting magnificently from his back. Wings. The wings of a butterfly arcing like living rainbows in a protecting bow around Potter. And they held the green of his eyes and the red of the crying sunrise, along with all the other flaming colours that accompanied it, and the black outlines of his onyx pitch hair and the gold and bronze shading of his skin. And they were the most beautiful things Draco had ever seen. He felt a pang of regret that he had not taken better care of this delicate, ethereal creatures during their meeting; not forged some kind of bond that he knew could have existed.

Alas, these elusive, insubstantial wings were not enough to save the butterfly and it landed harshly on the unforgiving ground not a metre away from where Draco lay.l For this reason alone, he heard Harry's whisperings to himself. He heard but he did not understand.

"I am the last, Tom," he murmured into the dust before rising with all the grace of a gliding bird targeting its prey. A single curse spat from his wand, easily deflected by his opponent, before his fingers fell open and dropped the wood to the floor. Then, with all the poise of a being making ready to take flight, a sadness flickered across his eyes as he sacrificed his hard fought for freedom, he raised his arms, spreading them in martyrdom for his cause. The moment his life had been snuffed out by a sickening flash of green, a shriek from his enemy flooded the world like a disease, reminding Draco horribly of nails scratching on a chalkboard. The Dark Lord caught aflame before his every eyes under the powerful rays of the blazing sun. He burned and burned until his ashes were scattering away into the Forbidden Forest, defeated at last.

Harry Potter's body was preserved just as Draco knew it would be, pinned behind glass after its short but magnificent flight. But the butterfly was gone, never to return except in the thoughts and hearts of the people who had watched it flutter, wondering how it kept itself aloft and why it kept persevering despite the raging storm around it. Draco remembered the butterfly. Draco remembered his butterfly.


End file.
